A couple of pints bring on reminiscences of wild oats sown in imagined misspent youths, in truth but on-campus capers of callow souls who’d never leave the straight and narrow.
After three they forget broken marriages, indifferent children, stalling careers and looming old age, lost in their nostalgic haze.
At closing time their five-pint bonhomie makes all seem right with the world.
Shaking hands, they depart anesthetized into the dead of the night.